Hopefully they're also increasing patrols (they're not mentioned in the article). At WWU, just a few miles south, they have "green coats," which are student volunteers who will walk you to your car or dorm after 5pm.

Edit: Apparently green coats are now 24hrs. I forgot the whole campus is peppered with emergency phones with blue lights on top._________________"Worse comes to worst, my people come first, but my tribe lives on every country on earth. Iíll do anything to protect them from hurt, the human race is what I serve." - Baba Brinkman

I don't know about the Vancouver campus, but the campus I'm at (UBC Okanagan) has security telephones that activate a strobe light and a *very* loud alarm, 24H private security who patrol the campus in car and on foot, and generally on the weekend a pretty strong police presence to help keep the peace. On top of that there are the WalkSafe volunteers, who you can call or find walking around (who also, coincidentally, wear green jackets) who'll help escort you around the campus if you aren't comfortable being alone or if you've been drinking, and the On-Call Residence Advisors who also roam the campus.

We have the occasional fight or party that needs to be broken up, but honestly it'd be hard to catch someone by themselves with no chance of getting help. The campus is small enough that chances are a security guard will hear any kind of scream or scuffle, and there are enough emergency phones on campus that you can generally get to one in 10 or 15 seconds.

Funnily enough, the only problem we really have with predators are those of the feline type. Always getting cautions about mountain lion sightings on campus or nearby.

Edit: Actually, thinking about it, unless you come to the campus by bus, on Friday and Saturday nights you can't even get on campus unless you are a prof/student or are accompanied by one. The police and campus security set up a roadblock on the only road into campus. They stop all non-bus vehicle traffic and ask for your UBC ID card.

Edit2: There are also security cameras damn near everywhere outside, on the roofs of the buildings.

This is good news, but that article itself is kinda meh. Amongst other problems (like using the phrasing "so-called Bechdel Test", something which seems condescending to me), citing Harry Potter for not passing the Bechdel is kinda dumb since most conversations in the books are either about Harry, Voldemort, or Harry and Voldemort._________________...if a single leaf holds the eye, it will be as if the remaining leaves were not there.http://about.me/omardrake

citing Harry Potter for not passing the Bechdel is kinda dumb since most conversations in the books are either about Harry, Voldemort, or Harry and Voldemort.

And they're both male...

... so it fails the Bechdel test. That's how the test works.

My point is that citing it isn't helpful to the conversation. What I'm saying is that regardless, it'd almost be as bad as citing Castaway for failing. Although, looking at other sources, they say the films do pass. Also, we're talking about 8 different movies. Do some pass? Do some fail? Like I said, I have no issue with the test, I just thought the article was shitty and had a condescending tone towards the story it was covering, which is pretty fucked up._________________...if a single leaf holds the eye, it will be as if the remaining leaves were not there.http://about.me/omardrake

This is good news, but that article itself is kinda meh. Amongst other problems (like using the phrasing "so-called Bechdel Test", something which seems condescending to me), citing Harry Potter for not passing the Bechdel is kinda dumb since most conversations in the books are either about Harry, Voldemort, or Harry and Voldemort.

well, the thing with harry potter (and star wars, and lord of the rings, and things like the indiana jones moves) is that there is basically 1 major female role - so there's no other women for her to talk to. Maybe not so bad with harry potter (there are at least a few female teachers and other students) - but really, before you can worry what the conversation is about, you have to have someone to have a conversation _with_._________________aka: neverscared!

Ginny talking with Mrs. Weasley, Hermione talking with McGonagall, etc. There's plenty of conversations. It just seemed like the article was lazily attempting to throw up some big name series for the sake of smearing mud on them. Maybe I'm just nit picking.

Then again, as I sit here and think about this more before posting (and drink some coffee, I'm working overnights now so this is my morning), I suppose I'm a bit cynical towards efforts liked this. I want real change, not just lip service.

I don't want some feminist equivalent of affirmative action in media, I want people to produce works with less gender bias because it's the right thing, not because they're trying to meet some sort of metric, i.e. do the right thing for the right reason. I don't want artificial, superficial shoehorning, like some poorly cast ensemble piece that unnaturally ignores facts, like a piece about a school in some Midwest area of the US that's 90% caucasian yet the story happens to revolve around two white kids, one black kid, a couple of latino kids, and an Asian or Indian kid.

Also, there's the fact that the Bechdel test can produce false positive results, i.e. A movie can pass it and still be sexist as fuck. Or like Indiana Jones, which I would argue isn't sexist because it fails the Bechdel, but it is arguably sexists for a many other reasons. I would posit that a film, or any work, whose titular character is male is more likely to fail simply because most scenes are either going to a) have that character in them or b) be related to that character in someway.

In general, seeing if a work passes the Bechdel test is a place where the conversation about how sexist a work is or isn't should start, but I'm fearful people will use it shallowly and ineffectually as mere label. Again, this goes back to me being a cynic._________________...if a single leaf holds the eye, it will be as if the remaining leaves were not there.http://about.me/omardrake

out of idle curiosity (this post is not meant to be in any way argumentative), how many episodes is it before FiM passes the reverse bechdel?

does the 10 second argument between Spike ( trying to buy a quill for Twilight) and the owner of Quills and Sofas in episode 24 count? or is there nothing until the horde of bad-apple immature teenage dragons (arguably of unknown gender, since we don't know how dragon society works, though they are all rather unflatteringly male-coded) converse in episode 47? or does the framing of that disqualify it as well?

or is there some other situation that comes up earlier in the show that I haven't thought of?_________________butts

I don't want some feminist equivalent of affirmative action in media, I want people to produce works with less gender bias because it's the right thing, not because they're trying to meet some sort of metric, i.e. do the right thing for the right reason. I don't want artificial, superficial shoehorning, like some poorly cast ensemble piece that unnaturally ignores facts, like a piece about a school in some Midwest area of the US that's 90% caucasian yet the story happens to revolve around two white kids, one black kid, a couple of latino kids, and an Asian or Indian kid.

There is so much wrong with this paragraph I'm not sure where to start. It sounds like you are complaining that minorities are getting too much representation in the workforce and on the screen. I'm going to assume for a moment that your intent is something else, because complaining that minorities are getting over-represented on screen is asinine.

If your complaint is that you dislike the use of token minority characters in screen writing, than you aren't talking about Affirmative Action or Feminism as being problems. The purpose of either is being judged by one's merits, not outward appearances. It's not "This movie is O.K. because it has no less than 2 people of minority in it!" The purpose is "stop using non-white males as props and actually give them some strong characters to play."

The Bechdel Test is not a be all end all test of feminist approval, it's a litmus test. It measures one simple thing to give a basic indication of where a movie might fall. Like any test that basic, it can give false positives, which are rare. The test isn't broken, your analysis of it is. Were there some strong female characters in Harry Potter? Yup. Did they ever talk about anything or anyone that wasn't male-centered? Not in the films, at least. And out of 8 films, even if each film has one scene that passes the test... so what? That's one scene. It's still a story centered around men. Men leading men into battle, picking sides and fighting it out.

1 Harry Potter meets the man possessing another man.
2 Harry Potter and the big phallic villain.
3 Harry Potter watches two bros fight it out while discovering that his best man friend's pet is really a man.
4 Harry Potter wins a competition against a woman and two other men.
5 Harry Potter forms an army, names it after an older man
6 Harry Potter and the slur describing another man
7 Harry Potter fights the bad man